24 VERMONT AGRICULTURAL, REPORT. 



it here to illustrate my statement. It speaks very plainly for 

 itself. 



By counting these annual rings I found that the tree was 

 200 to 225 years old; that in A. D. 1700 or before, it had begun 

 its life and was standing in the same place where its stump nov.' 

 stands. As many of its neighbors were larger and older than 

 this individual tree, some of them were doubtless standing as 

 small saplings when Samuel Champlain first sailed up this beauti- 

 ful lake that bears his name. I find that the sun was broaden- 

 ing its leaves and lengthening its branches long before the first 

 settlement of the State at Fort Dummer in 1724; that it was a 

 sturdy sapling when the French and Indians were trailing up 

 and down the Winooski River on their way to and from their 

 raids and massacres at Deerfield, Casco Bay, etc. Its lower 

 branches must have been too high for a moose to browse twenty- 

 five years before Ethan Allen was born ; and when that father of 

 Vermont independence first saw the light, my tree must have 

 been thirty feet tall or more and 8 or 10 inches in diameter. At 

 the time of the Revolutionary War it must have arrived at very 

 stately proportions. 



Standing in the virgin forest it must of necessity have 

 reached its trunk up very high to meet the sun, which all its 

 neighbors were crowding up for, so it must have been at this 

 time 50 or 60 feet tall and straight and comely. It had little 

 to contend against save a rigorous climate and the encroachment 

 of other trees. 



Wild beasts may have sought safety in its lofty branches, 

 and bees may have stored honey in its hollows ; but these were 

 mere incidents in its history. It had yet to deal with the white 

 man. 



The Indian on his trails up and down the winding Winooski 

 had little time to turn aside and pursue the gentle art of sugar- 

 making, but the dusky squaw, if she accompanied him on that 

 hunting or fighting trip, when the sun was warm in the spring- 

 time, may have been tempted to use the hatchet on my maple 

 or some of its neighbors, and to evaporate its sweet water by the 

 tedious process of dropping heated stones in it. Who can say? 



But about 1790 to 1800 this tree comes in contact with the 

 pioneer settlers of central Vermont. By the axe-marks in my 

 sectional block I find that it is now a. tree 14 or 15 inches in diam- 

 eter. From this time on until the present day, the history of this 

 tree is written in its own rocky fibre in enduring characters. 



In fact, the period from this time on, covers its sugar-mak- 

 ing epoch. I need not take the space to tell how for many years 

 it was tapped annually with an axe; how great cuts were made 



